Days of Blood & Starlight(90)

“I’ll ask them,” he said. He was conscious that Thiago’s assembly would be starting, and that he needed to be there. “The way they’re learning Chimaera, it won’t be long before they can tell it.”

She didn’t say anything. The softness of good memories was gone. She looked over her shoulder, furtive, and then up at him, piercing. “Ziri,” she said in a hush, “I have to get them out of here.”

“What? Why?”

“Thiago’s threatened them. As long as they’re here, I have to do exactly what he says. And I really want to stop doing what he says.” She said the last part quietly, burningly, and Ziri had the impression of something shifting in her, a girding up, a gathering of breath and strength.

“Do Zuzana and Mik know?”

“No, and they won’t want to go. They like it here. They like being part of something magical.”

So did Ziri. He’d relished those hours spent in Karou’s room with her and Issa and Mik and Zuzana, even if he had been tithing. They had been lively and filled with laughter and warmth, with resurrection instead of killing. “I’ll help you. We’ll get them to safety.”

“Thank you.” She touched his hand and said again, “Thank you.”

Then Zuzana called something to her in their human language and came spinning through the door.

“Are you coming?” Ziri asked Karou. “Thiago’s assembly will have begun.”

“Not invited,” she said. “I’m not supposed to worry myself over such matters. Will you tell me what he says? What he’s planning?”

“I will,” Ziri promised.

“And I have something to tell you, too.” Again, that girding and gathering, and a keen new resolve. Gone was the trembling girl Thiago had found in the ruins.

“What is it?” Ziri asked, but the small human whirlwind reached them then.

“Later,” Karou said as Zuzana grabbed her hand and pulled her away with a distracted hello over her shoulder to Ziri.

He left his breakfast uneaten and went out the door. What did she want to tell him? He could still feel her touch on his hand.

Once, when he was a boy and she was Madrigal, she had kissed him. She had taken his face in her hands and kissed him lightly on the forehead, and it was ridiculous how many times he had thought of it since. But his moments of happiness were a sad, small lot, and the kiss hadn’t had much competition for best memory. Now it did.

Now he had the memory of Karou’s shoulder warm against his own as they slept side by side, and the memory of waking beside her. What would it be like to wake beside her every morning? To lie down with her every night? And… to fill, with her, the hours between. All the hours of night.

“A luck thing,” she had said.

Supposedly he was lucky. Lucky Ziri. Because he had his natural flesh? It was a claim none of his comrades could make, so he didn’t argue if they wanted to call him lucky, but he’d never felt it, growing up without a people, no life but war, and even less now that the war was over—whatever that meant, as the killing raged on.

Then he thought of the screams of the dying, the smoke of the corpses, and he was ashamed to question his own luck. He was alive; that was not nothing, and it couldn’t be like this forever.

Everyone was already in the court when he got there—except Ten, who came slinking in a moment after Ziri and sidled up to the Wolf to whisper in his ear. Thiago paused to listen, and then his glance slid, cool, to lock on Ziri. It made Ziri’s flesh crawl, and then the Wolf spoke.

“As you all know, we lost a team in our strikes the other night, our first casualties, but their safety did his duty and returned with all their souls. Ziri.” Thiago nodded to him. There were cheers in the assembly, and someone reached out a heavy hand to jostle Ziri’s shoulder. But Ziri didn’t for a moment believe this speech was headed anywhere good, and he braced himself, and was unsurprised by the rest.

“But you need a new team now. If Razor will have you?” Thiago turned to Razor.

No, thought Ziri, his jaw clenching. Anyone else.

“Your wish, my general,” came Razor’s hiss of a voice. “But I can’t promise he’ll play hide-in-safety on my team, or keep that pretty skin of his.”

“Hide-in-safety” was a slur used in stupid bravado by soldiers who couldn’t see the value of preserving the souls of the fallen. Ziri tensed at the implication that he would ever choose to hide, but then he thought of what they would certainly be doing, and there was no conviction in his outrage. He would rather hide. Better yet, he would rather prevent the slaughter from happening at all.

But of course, that wasn’t going to be an option. Ziri had been a soldier now more years than he hadn’t. He’d never loved the life, but he was good at it, and never, at least, while the Warlord was alive, had he abhorred it. He did now.

“There’s a string of towns on the Tane River, east of Balezir,” said Thiago. He smiled with the sick exaltation that Ziri knew heralded grievous harm, and said, “I want the angels to wake in Balezir tomorrow and wonder why the Tane runs red.”





64


A NICER NUMBER


Karou was bent over a necklace when Ten came to her doorway, but in truth, her thoughts were far away, in Loramendi. She could still barely get her mind around what Issa had told her. Both good and bad indeed. But good and bad were words for a child’s primer, and did not come close to representing the magnitude of tragedy on the one hand, and on the other… hope.